264 Put behind bars

Yimei privately had thought that even if Sam chose to do so, there wouldn't be much she be able to do in return. But she didn't say all this to Cheng and came to the Li Mansion.

Including her, everyone else also came to the living room, upon hearing Li Yichen shout.

Sam looked at her father in consternation. She had gone to meet Wang Wei the previous day and done some house hunting. Neither of those would be palatable to him. She didn't know which one was he referring towards. As for her final plan, she didn't think she was ready to share that with anyone, least of all, her father. If he got even a whiff of it, he would get her put behind bars in the blink of an eye.

She held her ground and stared back at him with a raised eyebrow.

"You may have forgotten but I am no longer thirteen years old. I don't think I need to give any explanation for my actions to you or anyone else," she crossed her arms and replied calmly.

"Don't think that I don't know what you are upto. You are trying to woo the Wang men so that you can plan my ouster from there," he said on a huff.

Sam looked at her father in disbelief.

"If anyone has been plotting, that person is you!! From the time that you held back the news about my grandfather's death, to the information about the shares which he left me and not to forget the lawyer's letter you sent me to accept a meagre settlement versus claiming my rightful portion of the company. So don't you even dare point a finger at me. I am only trying to fight for what is mine," she shouted back, enraged.

Yimei couldn't stop herself from intervening. She pulled her father's arm and propelled him towards his room.

"Uh, Samantha, your father is under a lot of duress. I request you to be a little kinder towards him," Mrs. Li's tentative voice reached Sam's fuming ears.

She turned to look at her step mother and said, "don't worry, I move out of here tomorrow morning. No more stress for anyone."

"Li Sam, this is your house. You don't have to go anywhere. I will speak with your father," her grandmother intervened.

Sam smiled weakly at the old lady and said, "I know it is. But for the time being, it is better that I move into a place which is closer to the office. I don't want to waste time in commute every morning. I will come see you on the weekends. Or maybe you and I could plan a trip to the ancestral home in your village, just like the one we had taken with grandpa Li all those years ago."

Grandma Li smiled sadly at the brave child in front of her. She didn't know whose fault was it all those years ago but she did believe that Sam had a pure and kind heart, one which wouldn't hurt her own family intentionally.

Mrs. Li wringed her hands in helplessness. She didn't know who or what to believe. She just didn't want to see her daughter get affected by any of this.

Zhu residence

Zhu Cheng sat at his desk in his study and looked outside, broodingly. All his careful planning had gone down the drain with the arrival of this damn chit again in his life. Seven years ago, he had rightly sensed her to be a credible threat to his future fortune. Till the time, she hadn't arrived in Shanghai, Zhu Cheng wasn't even aware of her existence. Noone in the family had ever mentioned her. He had assumed that the entire Li wealth would belong to him via his naïve fiancée, one day.

But then Li Samantha had entered their lives and he could see the excitement on everyone's faces about the 'rightful heir' of the family. It had taken careful planning and calculated risks on his part to convince Sam slowly of the fact that he was simply engaged into the Li family due to financial constraints and that he didn't find himself at the same wavelength as Yimei, forget having any sort of affection for her.

After making sure that she believed him on that, he had used his full strength of charm to convince her of his attraction and then professed his love for her. Six months had been enough to make her feel like the princess of his world. Post that, it had been easy enough to ensure that she was the one telling her family about them. By the time she realised his duplicity, he had erased all proofs of his affection from her phone.

At that time, he thought that he had done a good job of destroying her credibility in front of her family. But it turned out that he was wrong.